How to Effectively Use Several Age-Old Promotional Tools

Promote with business cards

With all of the new marketing tools and resources like online social networking, blogs, Twitter and SEO, sometimes marketing with tools that have been around for centuries and are less obtrusive makes more sense and delivers better results.
The following steps detail how to use five marketing resources, some well over 100 years old, that still deliver the sale. Standard business cards, printed napkins, posters, printed pens and advertising thermometers each open up the world to unique ways of promoting.

Instructions

1. Use business cards to promote products and services. Business cards have long been a staple for most professionals. You print up a box of business cards and hand one out to everyone you meet and to those that you have not seen in a while--simple and straight forward.
   Promotional uses for the business card could easily be expanded to show product lines represented by the person carrying the card or be more expressive by giving a brief description of what the person does instead of just a title. For example, "Joe Smith: I can customize industrial training to fit your company's training needs."

2. Hand out custom-printed napkins to promote your company when displaying at events and or to visitors at the office. Custom-printed paper napkins have long been used for wedding and anniversary parties. This inexpensive specialty printing item can also add a special flare to any business and marketing event.
   Print the company name and logo or a product or service name on napkins that are the same color the company uses for sales and promotional materials. The napkins can be used at events, in the company break room or when offering visitors a beverage at the office.

3. Use colorful, professionally printed posters to promote your next special event or a product launch. Posters are an effective way to promote hotels, restaurants, retail, education, special events and hundreds of other types of businesses.
   While posters are used heavily in the entertainment industry, companies and organizations can use posters to deliver just about any type of message to masses of people. Keep the message short but memorable and always include a call to action with a telephone number or web site address.

4. Promote more often with a 63-year-old favorite: custom-printed pens. Always buy the best pen you can afford, buy in large quantities and distribute with every pocket folder, promotional event, interview and completed sale to vendors and every other potential customer or adversary you cross paths with throughout the day.

5. Look to a hundred-year-old favorite promotional tool--custom-printed indoor/outdoor thermometers--to leave a lasting impression with customers and clients. Today, there is a resurgence in using custom indoor or outdoor printed thermometers to market cars, food, soda, colleges, events, hospitals and gas stations, among others. Today's advertising thermometer looks much like the vintage thermometers and can add just the right look to a client's homes, businesses, or offices.
   Make giving the thermometers a special occasion by giving them to customers who spend over a certain dollar amount, provide much-needed feedback or participate in a special event. The thermometer is one of those items that people will hold onto and display for years.

Tips & Warnings

• Business cards started in the seventeenth century as visiting cards, and then they were called trade cards and finally in the nineteenth century were named business cards. Merchants used trade cards to advertise products and as maps to direct people to their stores. The first illustrated poster was printed in 1796. Jules Cheret is considered the father of the poster because he invented the four-color process that allowed mass production of all shapes and sizes of posters. The ballpoint pen has a long and exciting history. Starting in the fall of 1945, over 5,000 people went to Gimbels Department Store to buy one of the first ballpoint pens and sold over 10,000 pens for over $12 a pen. The original ballpoint pen was created in the late 1800s, but the first working pen came along in the early 1940s. How could one item as small and unobtrusive as the pen create such a commotion as when Gimbels sold 10,000 in one day? That old saying about "the power of the pen" is usually referenced to describe the written word, but this promotional wonder still holds marketing and public relations power. The first thermometer invented for temperature measuring happened in 1612. The first sealed-in-glass thermometer came along in 1654. Over 300 years later, custom-printed advertising thermometers came along and were used to promote in the early 1900s.

Resources

• Branded Pens: History of pens